Radiotherapy for DCIS still protects against recurrence after 15 years

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• Radiotherapy for DCIS still protects against recurrence after 15 years
• Dense breasts can nearly double the risk of breast cancer recurrence
• Brain's involvement in processing depends on language's graphic symbols
• Chemical pollution in Europe's seas: The monitoring must catch up with the science
• Noted history of medicine professor to speak at University of Houston
• A new take on the games people play in their relationships
• Scientists use rare mineral to correlate past climate events in Europe, Antarctica
• AMP applauds Supreme Court ruling: Sees win for patients and personalized medicine
• BUSM study demonstrates tomosynthesis effective in diagnosing knee osteoarthritis
• New discoveries about brain-hand connection sought to improve therapies, treatments, prosthetics

Radiotherapy for DCIS still protects against recurrence after 15 years Posted: 22 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Vienna, Austria: Radiotherapy treatment (RT) after surgery for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) [1] still has a major protective effect against recurrence more than 15 years later, according to the results of an international trial. Researchers found that the use of RT in addition to surgery could reduce the chances of a local recurrence (the cancer coming back in the same breast) by 50%. Results from the trial, which has one of the longest follow-ups of a large group of patients in the world to date, will be reported today (Thursday) to the 8th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-8). Dr. Mila Donker, a research physician from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, worked with colleagues from thirteen other countries under the auspices of the European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), based in Brussels, Belgium. They analysed the 15-year follow-up of more than 1000 DCIS patients, 50% of whom had received RT after total surgical excision of a tumour of less than 5cm diameter and 50% who had not. When radiotherapy had not been given, almost one in three women had developed a local recurrence, while the 50% risk reduction in those patients who had had RT held true for both an in-situ and an invasive cancer recurrence, where the cancer had spread outside the duct. The 15-year cumulative incidence for DCIS recurrence in the surgery group was 14.9%, as opposed to 7.5% in those patients in the combined group (surgery plus radiotherapy), and for an invasive recurrence the rates were 15.5% (surgery only) and 9.8% (combined). Although no survival difference was seen between the surgery alone and the surgery plus RT group, women who had an invasive recurrence had a significantly worse survival compared with those who had a DCIS recurrence or no recurrence at all. We found that the majority of the DCIS recurrences occurred within five years of... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Dense breasts can nearly double the risk of breast cancer recurrence Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Vienna, Austria: Women aged 50 and over with breasts that have a high percentage of dense tissue are at greater risk of their breast cancer recurring, according to Swedish research presented at the eighth European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-8) in Vienna today (Wednesday). Dr Louise Eriksson and her colleagues from the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) found that women with denser breasts had nearly double the risk of their cancer recurring, either in the same breast or in the surrounding lymph nodes, than women with less dense breasts. They warn that doctors should take breast density into account when making decisions about treatment and follow-up for these women. When a woman has a mammogram, the resulting scan gives an image of the breast that shows areas of white and black. The white areas represent the dense tissue, made up of the epithelium and stroma [1]. The black areas are made up of fatty tissue, which is not dense. The percentage density (PD) of the breast is calculated by dividing the dense area by the area of the whole breast (dense and non-dense tissue included). Breast density varies from woman to woman, and it also decreases with age. Dr Eriksson explained: Density can vary greatly, even between postmenopausal women. In the group of women I studied, those with the lowest percentage density had breasts that were less than one percent dense, whereas those with highest PD had 75-80% dense breasts. The mean average PD was 18%. However, density does decrease with age. Studies have shown a decrease by approximately two percent per year. The largest decrease is seen at menopause when PD decreases by approximately 10%. The researchers studied the mammograms and outcomes for 1,774 post-menopausal women who were aged 50-74 and who were part of a larger study of all women with breast cancer diagnosed between 1993-1995 in Sweden. We found that if you have a PD at diagnosis of 25% or more, you have an almost... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Brain's involvement in processing depends on language's graphic symbols Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Readers whose mother tongue is Arabic have more challenges reading in Arabic than native Hebrew or English speakers have reading their native languages, because the two halves of the brain divide the labor differently when the brain processes Arabic than when it processes Hebrew or English. That is the result of a new study conducted by two University of Haifa researchers, Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim of the Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities and the Learning Disabilities Department, and Prof. Zohar Eviatar of the Department of Psychology. It emerges that the contribution of the two halves of the brain to processing written language depends on the graphic and linguistic structure of these languages, noted Dr. Ibrahim. The two halves of the brain, called hemispheres, govern different types of activities: The right hemisphere specializes more in processing spatial tasks and the holistic (pattern) processing of messages, while the left hemisphere is responsible for processing verbal messages and local processing of messages. In order to examine the interaction between the two hemispheres while reading Hebrew, English and Arabic, two experiments were conducted with subjects divided into three groups: those with Arabic as their mother tongue, those with English as their mother tongue and those with Hebrew as their mother tongue. Each group was tested in their native language. In the first experiment, words and pseudowords (strings of letters that have no literal meaning) were presented on a screen, and the subjects were asked to figure out whether the stimulus was a real word; their response time, accuracy, and sensitivity were measured with every key pressed. In the second experiment, the subjects were presented with various words on the right or the left side of the screen, which directs the information to be processed by the opposite hemisphere (i.e., when the proper or nonsense word is screened... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Chemical pollution in Europe's seas: The monitoring must catch up with the science Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) According to a recent poll* of more than 10,000 citizens from ten European countries, pollution is the primary concern of the public at large among all issues that threaten the marine environment. A new position paper of the Marine Board-ESF shows that such public concern is not misplaced and is supported by scientific evidence. About 30,000 of the chemicals currently on the EU market have a production volume higher than one tonne per year. Increasing numbers of these substances end up in rivers, estuaries and seas with potentially damaging effects on marine organisms, ecosystems and processes. The oceans and seas are of growing strategic importance to Europe, both economically and socially. At the same time, the impact of human activities on marine ecosystems has increased markedly with chemical pollution as one of the main pressures. The latest Marine Board position paper on Monitoring Chemical Pollution in Europe's Seas: Programmes, Practices and Priorities for research shows that regulatory frameworks and monitoring programmes do not address the full range of potentially damaging pollutants, and completely overlook many of the 'new' pollutants which have entered use in recent years. The level of knowledge and awareness of the presence and potential impacts of new and emerging marine pollutants is still very limited explains working group co-Chair Patrick Roose from Belgian Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Models (MUMM). Co-Chair Colin Janssen from the University of Ghent adds: To be genuinely effective, monitoring programmes will need to be dynamic and take into account a continually expanding list of chemical pollutants, the impact that different pollutants can have on organisms, ecosystems and processes, and to attribute efforts and resources according to the perceived risk. Marine Board Position Paper 16, Monitoring Chemical Pollution in Europe's Seas: Programmes, Practices and Priorities for research,... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Noted history of medicine professor to speak at University of Houston Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The University of Houston (UH) has invited a noted professor in the history of medicine, Alexandra Stern, to give the John P. McGovern Endowed Lecture in Family, Health and Human Values at 7 p.m., Monday, April 9 at the Rockwell Pavilion in the M.D. Anderson Library. The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) at the University of Houston is very pleased to have Dr. Stern as the 2012 McGovern Lecturer in Family, Health, and Human Values, said Catherine Patterson, associate dean of graduate studies and professor of history. A leading expert in the history of genetics, Dr. Stern has explored a range of topics from eugenics policies in early 20th-century America to the ethical implications of the Human Genome Project. Her work investigates how health policy decisions impact individuals and families while exploring the ethical questions underlying those policies. Her current work on genetic testing is both timely and important. As medicine rapidly pushes the boundaries of what is possible, it prompts new questions about the social and ethical implications of medical advancements. Stern will present Don't Reduce Me to a Label: Disability Rights, Genetic Diagnosis, and Social Values. She will speak on the origins of genetic counseling in the 1940s and discuss how the first generation of medical geneticists stigmatized people with disabilities, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for empowerment and activism. Her presentation will trace this tension over the course of the 20th-century, as medical geneticists and genetic counselors became increasingly supportive of people with disabilities and the disabilities rights movement. Stern is the Zina Pitcher Collegiate Professor in the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, which won the America Public Health Association's Arthur Viseltear Award for outstanding... http://www.rxpgnews.com

A new take on the games people play in their relationships Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Human nature has deep evolutionary roots and is manifested in relationships with family members, friends, romantic and business partners, competitors, and strangers more than in any other aspects of behavior or intellectual activity, contends a University of Chicago behavioral biologist. Social behavior is, in part, genetically controlled and evolves by natural selection, said Dario Maestripieri, Professor of Comparative Human Development and Evolutionary Biology. In some cases, natural selection has come up with the same solutions to similar social problems in organisms as evolutionarily distant as people and fish. In other cases, humans use the social strategies they genetically inherited from the ancestors shared with other primates. As a result of this shared inheritance, some of the games people play in their social relationships are also played by monkeys and apes. In his new book, Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships, Maestripieri shows that human social behavior can be explained by using the theories that economists and evolutionary biologists developed, and by looking at the behavior of monkeys and apes. Game theory models used by economists, for instance, explain under what circumstances people and monkeys choose to cooperate or cheat with their partners, and when they choose to pick a fight with a bully or to retreat. The same cost-benefit analyses that explain different strategies used by male macaques to become the alpha male in a group they have just joined can also explain different strategies new employees can use to climb the power ladder in their company, he said. The same laws of supply and demand that determine how people pair up in the marriage market or the online dating market also regulate the social markets in which monkeys trade grooming for sex or other services with one another, he added. Maestripieri has studied primate... http://www.rxpgnews.com

Scientists use rare mineral to correlate past climate events in Europe, Antarctica Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The first day of spring brought record high temperatures across the northern part of the United States, while much of the Southwest was digging out from a record-breaking spring snowstorm. The weather, it seems, has gone topsy-turvy. Are the phenomena related? Are climate changes in one part of the world felt half a world away? To understand the present, scientists look for ways to unlock information about past climate hidden in the fossil record. A team of scientists led by Syracuse University geochemist Zunli Lu has found a new key in the form of ikaite, a rare mineral that forms in cold waters. Composed of calcium carbonate and water, ikaite crystals can be found off the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland. Ikaite is an icy version of limestone, say Lu, assistant professor of earth sciences in SU's College of Arts and Sciences. The crystals are only stable under cold conditions and actually melt at room temperature. It turns out the water that holds the crystal structure together (called the hydration water) traps information about temperatures present when the crystals formed. This finding by Lu's research team establishes, for the first time, ikaite as a reliable proxy for studying past climate conditions. The research was recently published online in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters and will appear in print on April 1. Lu conducted most of the experimental work for the study while a post-doctoral researcher at Oxford University. Data interpretation was done after he arrived at SU. The scientists studied ikaite crystals from sediment cores drilled off the coast of Antarctica. The sediment layers were deposited over 2,000 years. The scientists were particularly interested in crystals found in layers deposited during the Little Ice Age, approximately 300 to 500 years ago, and during the Medieval Warm Period, approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago. Both climate events have been documented in Northern Europe, but... http://www.rxpgnews.com

AMP applauds Supreme Court ruling: Sees win for patients and personalized medicine Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Bethesda, MD, March 21, 2012: The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) applauds the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling today in the case of Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories as a victory for patients and for the advancement of personalized medicine, stated Iris Schrijver, MD, the Organization's President. AMP, an international professional society representing more than 2000 physicians, doctoral scientists, and medical technologists, joined 10 other medical and healthcare organizations in filing an amicus brief with the Court in support of Mayo Clinic. AMP is also the lead plaintiff in Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that challenges the validity of patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer and is currently under review by the High Court. Prometheus acknowledged that physicians can infringe the patent by merely thinking about the relationship between drug metabolite levels and patient response, asserted Dr. Schrijver. It is encouraging that the Court recognized that the Prometheus patents neither promote the advancement of medical practice, nor benefit patient care. In Prometheus, the Court wisely recognized that overly broad patents can inhibit innovation, stated Jennifer Hunt, MD, MEd, the Organization's President-Elect. Establishing a drug reference range is important, but standard work for laboratory physicians. Awarding monopolies over the medical use of natural, biological relationships stifles innovation in true diagnostic test methods and obstructs improvements for patient care. AMP believes the Supreme Court's reasoning in Mayo v. Prometheus extends to patents that claim ownership over another type of natural phenomenon, the biological relationships between genetic variants and clinical disease. Such relationships are at the heart of personalized medicine. Patients are increasingly being disadvantaged by gene correlation... http://www.rxpgnews.com

BUSM study demonstrates tomosynthesis effective in diagnosing knee osteoarthritis Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) (Boston) - A recent study done by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows that tomosynthesis may be more beneficial in diagnosing knee osteoarthritis than X-ray imaging. In the study, which is published online in the journal Radiology, tomosynthesis detected more osteophytes (abnormal bony spurs) and subchondral cysts (small collection of fluid within the bone) in the knee joint than conventional X-ray imaging. Daichi Hayashi, MD, PhD, research instructor at the Quantitative Imaging Center in the department of radiology at BUSM, is the lead author of the study. The research was led by Ali Guermazi, MD, PhD, professor of radiology at BUSM and chief of musculoskeletal radiology at Boston Medical Center. Osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, is characterized by a degeneration of cartilage and the underlying bone and other soft tissues in the joints, leading to pain and stiffness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability in the United States, affecting approximately 26.9 million Americans. Osteoarthritis can be diagnosed clinically, from symptoms and physical examinations, or by taking and evaluating images. While X-ray imaging has commonly been used to diagnose the disease, recent research has shown that it is less accurate than Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). However, while MRI provides higher-quality images, it is much more expensive than X-rays and cannot be routinely used in daily clinical practice. CT scan is another imaging technique that can provide detailed images of the joint, but it exposes patients to higher doses of radiation than X-rays. Despite the known limitation of X-ray imaging, it is widely used to diagnosis knee osteoarthritis, both in terms of daily clinical practice and also for clinical research studies, said Hayashi. Given the limitations, Hayashi and the team lead by Guermazi explored... http://www.rxpgnews.com

New discoveries about brain-hand connection sought to improve therapies, treatments, prosthetics Posted: 21 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Research at Arizona State University and Columbia University to better understand the intricate sensory and cognitive connections between the brain and the hands has won support from the National Science Foundation. New discoveries about such connections could benefit people with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and cerebral palsy, and those who need prosthetic hands. The NSF has awarded a $640,000 grant to fund a research collaboration between Marco Santello, an ASU professor of biomedical engineering, and Columbia University scientist Andrew Gordon to expand their studies in this area. Santello is also interim director of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, one of ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Gordon is a professor of movement science in the Behavioral Science department in Columbia's Teachers College, where he coordinates the Kinesiology program. The two have worked together for several years in pursuit of deeper knowledge about interactions between sensory feedback and motor actions involved in control of the hand. In their current project they're seeking to determine the neural mechanisms that control learning and planning of the grasping and manipulation of objects. They're examining the visual cues people use to assess object properties before they grasp or otherwise manipulate objects. In addition to using cues such as object shape or density, people often use memory of similar actions performed in the past. We can pick up these cues, and we can predict the result of our actions on an object, but we don't know exactly how the brain does this, Santello says. Santello's focus is on neural control of the hand and the workings of senses such as vision and touch. By manipulating these senses in people with normal brain, hand and muscle functions, Santello studies what causes the performance of an action that is easy under normal conditions to become difficult. This... http://www.rxpgnews.com

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